The works in L I G H T are grounded in a nineteenth century landscape oil painting tradition of ethereal sunlit skies and dark foregrounds. Smith’s use of mark-making continues his recent practice with overlaid texts in white oil paint on the canvas surface. These texts - of mathematical, religious, scientific, astronomical, poetic and historical observations - invoke a sense of longing, and gather echoes of the past, mine the passage of history, bringing it forward to the currency of the lived moment. Handwritten citations, truncated notes, ambiguous traces, scientific diagrams and blackboard erasures float on the loosely painted surfaces of stretched linen, collage and, more recently, found objects including gold-framed historical nineteenth century paintings and ceramics. The objects are chosen, indeed collected, so as to be carriers of an authentic history. By the act of writing and painting on such objects, Smith is essentially saying: Here are these things that I bring to you. As John Armstrong has written, ‘it takes up the personalising process of an endearment written in a book given as a gift’.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner and
At Length Did Cross an Albatross,
in situ on 3.5m gallery wall

Terra Nova, Beyond the Pressure Ridges of the Ross Ice Shelf, 1911, 2011
oil on linen
30 x 122 cm

Fire at Dead Horse Gap,
in situ on 3.5m gallery wall

Blue the Vault of Heaven, II,  2011
Oil and enamel, Jasperware Wedgwood on black shelf
Dimensions variable

To read Garth Clark's essay 'Clobbering Wedgewood', please click here.

Span of History 2010
c-type print edition of 10 (currently 4 available)
size: 58 x 124 cm

Icon Regilded I,
2011
oil on 19thC Icon
31.5 x 25.5cm